Murder Is Murder - Even In A War Zone

Did you wonder why the U.S. government was so upset when WikiLeaks accessed and released some of their military and State Department cables. If you thought it was because it might endanger U.S. personnel or allies, then you were wrong. It's because they just didn't want to be embarrassed by the wrong things American personnel were doing -- and the information this cable contains is about as wrong as it gets.

A U.S. military cable recently released by WikiLeaks tells of the murder of civilians by U.S. soldiers. Back in 2006, U.S. soldiers were involved in a firefight in Ishaqi (about 80 miles northwest of Baghdad). After the firefight was over, some civilians were taken prisoner. They were:

The cable notes that "at least 10 persons, namely Mr. Faiz Hratt Khalaf, (aged 28), his wife Sumay'ya Abdul Razzaq Khuther (aged 24), their three children Hawra'a (aged 5) Aisha (aged 3) and Husam (5 months old), Faiz's mother Ms. Turkiya Majeed Ali (aged 74), Faiz's sister (name unknown), Faiz's nieces Asma'a Yousif Ma'arouf (aged 5 years old), and Usama Yousif Ma'arouf (aged 3 years), and a visiting relative Ms. Iqtisad Hameed Mehdi (aged 23) were killed during the raid."


Now the soldiers had a choice. They could send these prisoners back to headquarters for questioning and possible detainment, or they could release them. They did neither. They shot all of them in the head after handcuffing them (and knowing they were unarmed and posed no danger). Then they called in an air strike to cover up the murders.

I don't know about you, but I don't think there's ever a justification for the intentional muder of a child. And look at the ages of these children -- two were 5 years-old, two were 3 years-old, and the other was a 5 month-old baby. I'm also having a bit of trouble believing it was necessary to kill a 74 year-old woman (who was unarmed and in handcuffs).

The soldiers (and their superiors) tried to cover this up by claiming the family died in an air strike. But an autopsy revealed that each person had been shot in the head before the building was bombed, including all of the children.

The United Nations tried to investigate these murders, but they were stonewalled by the Bush administration. The investigator, Philip Alston, who viewed pictures of the bodies in a Tikrit morgue and verified everyone had been shot in the head, wrote to the Bush administration but got no response, which he said "was the case with most of the letters to the U.S. in the 2006-2007 period." The U.S. government has still not responded.

The actions of the soldiers involved can't be justified, but neither can the actions of the government officials who placed them in an absurd war and nation-building effort with goals that couldn't be accomplished. This is nothing short of a war crime, and the people most responsible are George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld.